Lizzie laughed. Andora’s imaginings were really puerile. “What awful woman? His landlady? Don’t be such a goose, Andora. How can it have been kept back from him, when we’ve found it here among his things?” “Yes; but then why was it never opened?” Andora held out the letter, and Lizzie took it. The writing was hers; the envelop bore the Passy postmark; and it was unopened. She stood looking at it with a sudden sharp drop of the heart. “Why, so are the others--all unopened!” Andora threw out on a rising note; but Lizzie, stooping over, stretched out her hand. “Give them to me, please.” “Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie--” Andora, still on her knees, continued to hold back the packet, her pale face paler with anger and compassion. “Lizzie, they’re the letters I used to post for you--_the letters he never answered!_ Look!” “Give them back to me, please.” The two women faced each other, Andora kneeling, Lizzie motionless before her, the letters in her hand. The blood had rushed to her face, humming in her ears, and forcing itself into the veins of her temples like hot lead. Then it ebbed, and she felt cold and weak. “It must have been some plot--some conspiracy!” Andora cried, so fired by the ecstasy of invention that for the moment she seemed lost to all but the esthetic aspect of the case. Lizzie turned away her eyes with an effort, and they rested on the boy, who sat at her feet placidly sucking the tassels of the bag. His mother stooped and extracted them from his rosy mouth, which a cry of wrath immediately filled. She lifted him in her arms, and for the first time no current of life ran from his body into hers. He felt heavy and clumsy, like some one else’s child; and his screams annoyed her. “Take him away, please, Andora.” “Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie!” Andora wailed. Lizzie held out the child, and Andora, struggling to her feet, received him. “I know just how you feel,” she gasped out above the baby’s head. Lizzie, in some dark hollow of herself, heard the echo of a laugh. Andora always thought she knew how people felt! “Tell Marthe to take him with her when she fetches Juliet home from school.” “Yes, yes.” Andora gloated over her. “If you’d only give way, my darling!” The baby, howling, dived over Andora’s shoulder for the bag. “Oh, _take_ him!” his mother ordered. Andora, from the door, cried out: “I’ll be back at once. Remember, love, you’re not alone!” But Lizzie insisted, “Go with them--I wish you to go with them,” in the tone to which Miss Macy had never learned the answer.